


Five Times Jack Was Not Reunited With Gray

by defeatedbyabridge



Category: Torchwood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-28
Updated: 2012-03-28
Packaged: 2017-11-02 15:30:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/370548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/defeatedbyabridge/pseuds/defeatedbyabridge
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five ways the reunion could have happened. </p><p>(With apologies to Douglas Adams.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Times Jack Was Not Reunited With Gray

**1\. The Club**

Ianto looked around, wondering if they'd been led down a garden path or two. And really, not just a tiny little garden path, but an esplanade of some sort, with a parade including a marching band and baton twirlers. 

He'd always quite wanted to learn how to twirl a baton.

Anyway. 

There were no aliens here. No untoward elements. Nothing strange, except that the overpriced drinks were actually less overpriced than other clubs he'd been to, and the walls were decorated in understated green instead of pretentious black. The drag act on stage was quite impressive, and the company was good. He liked going out with Jack, even if this was work-related. He'd stuck to lemonade, as he was on duty.

Jack's drink was garishly pink, and had a little umbrella in it. 

"Anything?" Ianto murmured. He did his best casual lean on the chest high table, which obliged him by teetering alarmingly. He sighed, and stopped leaning. So much for savoir faire. 

Jack looked up from his handheld and shook his head. He leaned across, snuck a hand behind Ianto's head, and pulled him close for a searing kiss. When they broke apart finally, Jack said, "I might be feeling hornier?" 

Ianto blinked, straightening his tie. "How would we tell?" 

"Ha, ha." 

Then Ianto saw something, something that made him wonder if perhaps there WAS something odd going on here after all. A drinks waiter who looked appallingly like Jack, right down to the shape of his arse under the tight black uniform pants. Ianto tapped Jack on the shoulder. "Jack, do you have any relatives around here?" 

Jack breathed, "Gray?" 

...but he wasn't looking at the waiter. He was looking at the stage, at the man in a giant flamingo-pink wig belting out 'I Will Survive'. 

**2\. Whoops.**

Jack ran flat out across the bridge with Owen behind him, only too aware that Ianto was already hurt, and Gwen was unconscious, and they needed his help to get the damn Weevil but he’d been distracted by the OTHER damn Weevil… 

So, of course, that was when someone grabbed his arm and said, “Jack! It’s me!” 

He shook the person off with a vague apologetic comment, and vaguely registered the vague sounds of a descending scream.

When he walked back across the bridge, supporting Ianto while Owen helped Gwen, he couldn’t see that person. But he leaned over the railing, just on the offchance, and saw a limp body on the ground many meters below. 

He sighed sadly, dropped Ianto off at the Hub, then came back to check it out.

He knelt next to the body, and turned it over gently. “Shit.” 

**3\. Space Whale.**

Owen looked at the goop that covered his arms to the elbows, and he grumbled under his breath. 

“Any ideas?” Jack called from the other side of the wreck of the giant space whale. 

“No, I can’t say that this autopsy on this giant dead pile of exploded blubber is really proving conclusive in the ideas department!” Owen shouted back. There was something about this poor sad huge creature that made him feel sad and cranky. From what little they could tell, the whale had appeared around three hundred feet above a field, and had dropped to the ground. Killing it. 

He didn’t know exactly why the autopsy was still necessary. 

“We don’t know anything about the bowl of flowers, either,” Tosh said calmly, materialising next to him in the twilight in that way she had of walking like a cat. A very quiet, disturbingly hot, cat. “It could be petunias. Or possibly daisies.”

“Uh, Owen?”

Gwen’s voice. 

He sighed, gave Tosh a rueful, half-hearted smile (it was most annoying how she could often lift him out of a foul mood), and headed around the whale to where Gwen was. “Yeah?”

“Do unexploded bits of space whale often quiver like that?”

Owen shrugged. “Maybe it’s about to explode.”

A hand shot out of a portion of bloody meat. “Now that’s someone who wanted revenge for ‘Alien’,” Tosh murmured. 

* * *

Owen belted around the side of the whale. “Jack! Jack! -- oh, take your tongue out of Ianto's mouth!" 

Jack broke apart from Ianto, grinning. "Come on, Owen, look at him. Wouldn't you?" 

Ianto shrugged, straightening Jack's coat. Owen wondered if it was something automatic, a fussy fidgety composure-regaining move, or if it was kinky. Master and servant. Kinky, probably, knowing them. And yeah, Ianto did look kind of hot like that, hair mussed, lips swollen. 

"He wouldn't. He doesn't like to cuddle, afterwards," Ianto murmured genially to Jack. 

Owen felt himself go bright red, especially once he saw the smirk on Jack's face. They really were insufferable. "I have news for you," he said tersely. "But now I'm not sure if I want to give it to you."

"Oh, you do," Jack purred. "And you want to give me the news, too."

Owen sighed, and tried not to flinch as a group of geese took off noisily from the pond nearby. He watched Jack's face carefully as he began to speak. "Your brother seems to like to travel by space whale. His middle name isn't Jonah, is it?" 

Jack went so pale he was nearly fluorescent in the twilight. "Gray? He's here?" He took off. 

Owen followed, along with Ianto, in time to see Jack whump into the strange guy's arms, completely disregarding the blood and goop staining his clothes.

**4\. Oh, crap.**

Ianto said tentatively, "I'm sure he'll like you, Jack. He's a bit stern but he's always liked the people I like. Eventually."

Jack grinned, and straightened his lapels before Ianto could do it. They were in the lift, on the way to Ianto's dad's flat. "It'll all be fine, Ianto. Everyone loves me."

"You know, when I was a kid he used to say something strange about coming from the future," Ianto mused, fussing with Jack's hair for something to do. He had to fuss with SOMETHING. The bloke he loved was about to meet his dad. Of course he was nervous. 

The lift doors opened.

Jack's jaw dropped. "Gray?" 

Ianto looked back and forth between the two of them, panic mounting at the base of his spine. "Jack?" 

"Jack," his dad breathed, moving forward to embrace him. "Ianto, this is my brother."

Ianto sighed, slumping back against the lift wall. "Well, this makes certain things rather awkward."

**5\. If only.**

He'd only been given one task. Get Gray to safety. That's all he had to do.

But he'd let go of his hand, somehow.

Jack scrubbed his fingers through his hair, looking around frantically. He was nearly bowled over by yet another desperate family group, but he managed to dodge the father at the last second. 

"Gray!" he screamed. 

"Over here!" 

…at last. 

Jack scrambled for the tree, and found Gray huddled on the other side of it, ankle clearly twisted. "I'll carry you. I've got you, Gray. I'll always look after you."


End file.
